We wish a very happy birthday to the conductor Charles Dutoit, who turns 86 today.

An outstanding maestro who has received the International Classical Music Awards’ Lifetime Achievement Award and the Royal Philharmonic Society Gold Medal Award, and has been collaborating with Festival Ljubljana for many years. At this year’s concert that was part of the jubilee 70th Ljubljana Festival, he was joined not only by the Slovenian Philharmonic Choir and Orchestra but also by the chamber choirs Ave and Megaron, the youth choir of the Glasbena Matica Ljubljana, and the soloists Sophie Koch, Charles Workman, John Relyea and Ashley Riches. Together they performed Berlioz’s La damnation de Faust, an extensive vocal-instrumental work about the price of the human soul, based on the play by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.

The Swiss maestro will perform again in Ljubljana at the 6th Winter Festival, in which he will perform Berlioz’s powerful requiem together with the above orchestra.